Spreadsheets are a well-known means for processing vast amounts of numeric information wherein particular cells in the spreadsheet may be related with known mathematical relationships. An example of a spreadsheet application is the Excel spreadsheet, available from Microsoft. Recently, computer application programs have incorporated the ability to display an expanded array of cell border, background and character attribute information wherein data is displayed to the user with the same format attributes in which printed data will appear. For example, characters may typically be printed with any of a number of fonts wherein characters may be bold, underlined, italicized, centered, etc. Similarly, individual cells may be displayed with various borders and background colors. In prior spreadsheet applications, format attribute information was stored in memory. Therefore, for each spreadsheet cell, several bytes of information were required. For example, for each character, individual data bytes were required for the character values, as well as attribute information, such as fonts; and position enhancements as mentioned above, e.g., superscript; and appearance, such as bold and italics. In prior systems, where relatively small amounts of data were processed, this arrangement provided acceptable performance and utility. However, as computer systems have become more sophisticated, the size and complexity of programs has increased dramatically. The increased amount of data processed in applications such as spreadsheets, coupled with the desirability of providing enhanced character attributes, has rapidly increased the memory needed to support an application. Therefore, techniques which improved speed, efficiency and performance of computer application programs have become increasingly important.